Most design leaders don’t fail because their work isn’t good—they fail because they’re speaking the wrong language. In this talk, Dan will share what he's learned from a career spent moving design out of the studio and into the boardroom. Drawing on stories from his Uplifting Design journey, he'll unpack how design earns trust, influence, and airtime at the very top.

You’ll hear how Dan once found himself educating Chairman of the Board Lord Blackwell about the strategic power of design at Lloyds Banking Group—and why that conversation changed everything. He’ll talk about having the Walmart CEO join weekly design crits (yes, really), and why his current CEO insists on being the first person to see raw design sketches.

This isn’t about selling design harder. It’s about reframing design as a leadership tool—one CEOs already care about, even if they don’t call it design yet.

Dan Makoski

Chief Design Advisor at Uplifting Design

Dan is a Chief Design Advisor who has led user experience and design at many of the world’s largest companies, including Google, Walmart, Microsoft, UnitedHealth Group, Lloyds Banking Group, Capital One, and Motorola.

Dan started Google’s modular phone Project Ara, designed Hotmail and the original Surface at Microsoft, created “Hey Moto” while leading design research globally at Motorola (which was quickly adopted by Google as the first version of “Hey Google”), and doubled conversion with a redesign of Walmart.com.

He is a Fellow at the Royal Society of Arts, a founding member of the Design Executive Council, has been granted residence in both Beijing and London as a global design expert, is now a guest-lecturer for design masterclasses at the Royal College of Art and the London School of Economics, a Non-executive Director and Strategic Advisor to design-curious CEO’s, and a respected author and speaker on design and innovation.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mak0ski/